Report of the Kew Committee. 



119 



The spare barograph., thermograph, and Beckley rain gauge, the 

 property of the Meteorological Council, formerly deposited at the 

 Observatory, having been lent by the Council to the Radcliife 

 Trustees, were set up at their Observatory in Oxford at the beginning 

 of the year. 



With a view to prevent certain failures occasionally taking place in 

 the photographic system of registration, which are attributed to 

 chemical action in the wax used in the preparation of the paper, it 

 has been considered desirable to introduce in part of the work, by way 

 of experiment, a new process devised by Captain Abney, R.E., F.R.S., 

 in which un waxed paper is employed. 



At the request of Admiral Mouchez, Directeur de l'Observatoire 

 National, Paris, a set of copies of the autographic records, together 

 with descriptions of the instruments and other particulars respecting 

 the Observatory, has been forwarded to the Museum recently 

 established in that Institution. 



III. Solar Observations. 



The preliminary reductions of the measurements of the Kew solar 

 negatives having been completed in January last, a re-examination of 

 the pictures was made with the object of classifying the spots ac- 

 cording to a scale of figure and magnitude ; this being now terminated, 

 Mr. McLaughlin is engaged assisting Mr. Marth in the reduction 

 to heliocentric elements of the pictures from January, 1864, to April, 

 1872. 



These operations have all been conducted under the direction and at 

 the expense of Mr. De La Rue. 



The eye observations of the sun, after the method of Hofrath 

 Schwabe, as described in the Report for 1872, have been made on 

 246 days, in order to maintain for the present the continuity of 

 the Kew records of sun-spots. The sun's surface was observed to be 

 free from spots on 27 of those days. 



A catalogue of the whole of the solar photographs taken at Kew 

 during a decade 1862 to 1872, has been prepared and forwarded to the 

 Solar Committee of the Science and Art Department. 



At the request of the Council of the Royal Astronomical Society, 

 the valuable collection of MSS. containing the memorable series of 

 sun-spot observations made by Hofrath Schwabe, of Dessau, during' 

 the years 1825 to 1867, which had been deposited in the Library of 

 the Observatory, the first volumes since 1865, was transferred to the 

 Society's Library at Burlington House, London. In order, however, 

 to render the collection of sun-spot observations at Kew as complete 

 as possible, and to prevent the total loss of the observations in case 

 of fire, the Committee voted the sum of £90 to defray the cost of 

 making a complete copy of the solar drawings. 



